The most Amazing Airplane in history

The most Amazing Airplane in history

Designed by World War I aviator Konstantin Kalinin with a wingspan greater than the B-52 and a much greater wing area, the K-7 was one of the biggest aircraft built before the jet age. It was only one engine short of the B-52 as well, having the curious arrangement of six pulling on the wing leading edge and one pushing at the rear.

The dream of huge transports capable of carrying large numbers of passengers found fertile ground in many countries, but never really bore fruit until after the Second World War. Between the wars-in addition to the dreadful 'Capronisimo' - there were a number of big transport aircraft designed in Europe and America, but only a handful were ever built, and none of the really big dreams (100 + passengers) ever actually went into service.

The most Amazing Airplane in history

There was Claudius Dornier's big Do-X of 1929 which could carry 150 passengers, but it took her 10 months to fly from Germany to New York on a demonstration flight in 1930-31. The Pan Am Clippers (built by Martin, Sikorsky and later Boeing) succeeded in conquering the airways on a global scale in the years immediately before World War II, but the biggest of them, the Boeing 314, could carry only 74 passengers.

Among those which were built, there were few stranger than the Kalinin K-7 and the Tupolev Ant-20. It was strange on one hand because of the fact that so ponderous and clumsy aircraft could actually fly, and on the other hand because the big craft were developed in the Soviet Union during the Stalin years. It would seem that within the context of Josef Stalin's paranoid quest for socialist egalitarianism, so grand a concept as a 120- passenger airliner would have no place. However, Stalin and his cronies, for all the lip service they paid to the 'proletariat,' were consummate showmen more interested in the glory of the Soviet State than in the everyday lives of Russian peasants. In this context, grandiose machines of unique design had a very important political role.

The most Amazing Airplane in history

The most Amazing Airplane in history

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